Discussion: LUCRETIUS The Nature of Things

We had a good discussion today about Lucretius' The Nature of Things.  Interestingly, Stephen told us that a villa was found in Herculaneum (near Pompei) about 15 years ago, that contained a library buried and preserved in the ash. The owner was likely an Epicurean as his library reflected this school of thought. This was interesting to me, that in my lifetime these new discoveries of ancient information have been made. I visited Pompei with Megan in 1988 and this discovery was made after that. Who knows what we may yet find?

We'll be reading Marcus Aurelius next week so we spent some time discussing the Epicurean philosophy vs the Stoics (the school of thought Marcus Aurelius adhered to).  Both of them began in the 3-4 last centuries BCE and continued into the first centuries AD.
The Epicureans felt that life was completely random, there was no master plan, no Fate.  The Stoics felt that Nature had a master plan and Fate was very much a factor.  Epicurus (341-270 BCE) lived during the Hellenistic Age.  Both he and Lucretius (c. 99-55 BCE) lived during periods of crisis and upheaval with war and power struggles, lots of change.  This may have influenced both their viewpoints.  We discussed the concept of the axial age or the Great Transformation, the theory that prior to about 500 BCE, early man did not think very much about the meaning of life.  They did not question much, were not self-reflexive.  Fairly suddenly people in India, the Middle East, Asia and Greece began to radically question things.  Philosophers became more important and more prominent.

We began our discussion at the beginning: why did Lucretius start his poem with a homage to Venus when the Epicurenas did not believe in gods?  It was not necessarily that Lucretius did not believe in gods but that he probably did not believe that gods had any interest or control in our lives.  He also felt strongly that sacrifices to gods and using religion to justify evil actions (such as Agaememnon sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia to the gods) was not only useless but very wrong.

They did not believe in gods or afterlife.  They felt it was easy to get hold of what we need and we don't need much (need vs desire).  What we inevitably suffer is not too serious and easy to put up with.  The Epicureans preferred to live communally with like-minded people but apart from general society.  They felt the key to happiness (or contentment) was: freedom from disturbance and anxiety in the soul + freedom from pain in the body.  To accomplish these the Epicurean should avoid unpleasantness from other humans, live with like-minded people and avoid the pangs of conscience.  Don't live in the future (or past), live in the moment.  These ideals break down in larger societies but if society is disintegrating then these smaller, simpler communities become more desirable and viable as seen in some communities (or in works of fiction) examining dystopian ideals and Armageddon scenarios.

We spoke about needs vs desires and how our imaginations lead us to desires (again it's hard for me to think negatively about imagination).  You can use imagination to enliven your life and bring interest to it but don't let it make you unhappy or malcontent.

Roberta brought up empathy vs sympathy and there was a debate about the definitions of these two and which one would Lucretius have agreed with.

EMPATHY Oxford Online Dictionary - empathy
noun: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

SYMPATHY  Oxford Online Dictionary - Sympathy
noun: 1. feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune
          2. understanding between people; common feeling: the special sympathy between the two boys was obvious to all

• (sympathies) support in the form of shared feelings or opinions: his sympathies lay with his constituents
• agreement with or approval of an opinion or aim; a favourable attitude: I have some sympathy for this view

People often confuse the words empathy and sympathy. Empathy means ‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another’ (as in both authors have the skill to make you feel empathy with their heroines), whereas sympathy means ‘feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune’ (as in they had great sympathy for the flood victims).


We also spoke about theimportance of the "swerve" or "clinamen", that slight movement of atoms that allows for randomness in the world and negates the possibility of predestination.  There was a discussion about Karl Marx who did a lot of thinking about the swerve vs. Democrates (Stoic) view that atoms move in straight lines.  For Marx this allowed the notion of free will.

In the Epicurean world view, we live in a world without plan or purpose, without meaning, but this world provides all that we need.  The Epicureans wrote about "ataraxia" or equanimity or being content with here and now.  The existentialist question then becomes how do you live in a world with no purpose, what is a good life?

LUCRETIUS "The Nature of Things"

LUCRETIUS  The Nature of Things  Transl. A.E. Stallings; Penguin Classics, 2007

I had no idea that before 60 BC, Greek and Roman intellectuals had figured out that everything was made out of small, indivisible particles (atomos); that “many things have common elements, as words share letters” (Book I, 197-8).  I had never heard of Epicurus, on whose philosophy Lucretius based his 7000 line poem.  Epicurus lived in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries B.C.E. but his theories came after earlier philosophers, most notably Democritus in the 5^th century B.C.E.  I find it amazing that 2500 years ago, philosophers had already come up with the concept of infinitesimally small indivisible particles, of matter and void, making up everything we see around us.

Lucretius wrote his work as a poem.  He writes in Book I 931ff 
“[…] I teach great truths, and set out to unknot the mind from tight strictures of religion, and since I write of so darkling a subject in a poetry so bright […] I want to coat this physic in rich song, to kiss it, as it were, with the sweet honey of the Muse. […]”. 
I’m impressed by his scholarship but I’m also very impressed by the translator, A.E. Stallings who translated the Latin into English rhyme, heptameter to be exact.  She calls them “fourteeners” saying that their “old-fashioned rhythm and ring will get across something of the archaic flavor of Lucretius’ Latin”.  There are a few times that she has used anachronistic modern phrases but overall being able to read it as poetry seems to preserve some of the original feel of the words.

There are some beautiful turns of phrases (Book I, 143-144)

As I seek the right words and the right poetry to light

Brilliant lanterns for your mind […]

Lucretius’ first principle is that “nothing can be made from nothing”, certainly not by any supernatural power.  Next he says that “Nature does not render anything to naught” meaning that everything eventually breaks back down to its basic elements, things don’t disappear.  Everything is made of atoms “those seeds that abide forever”, the “elemental particles”.  He theorizes that “elements are of eternal stuff linked with bonds of different strengths” – pretty amazing stuff for the pre-electron microscope age.  He explains how  we know there are these particles even though we can’t see them.  These early thinkers also surmised that “there’s also emptiness in things”, that even in hard things like iron or stone, there are empty spaces, that these things are not “one solid mass”.  The universe consists of only 2 things: matter and void. Lucretius argues for the indivisibility of atoms by saying (Book I, 616-620)

[…] since after all

Half of a half of anything can still again be cut

In two, and on and on ad infinitum.  And then what

Will be the difference between the tiniest speck of matter

And all the universe? […]

In Book II (The Dance of Atoms), he writes that “all bodies of matter are in motion" and compares this to dust motes dancing in a slant of sunlight: the random ceaseless motion as well as how this usually occurs below the abilities of our senses to detect.  He also brings in the concept of the “swerve”, the slight variability that allows collisions to occur between atoms and therefore introduces some randomness into the universe that “shatters the laws of fate” (Book II, 254). 

In support of reason, in Book III (Mortality and the Soul), Lucretius writes that he doesn’t think there is any flaw in each human that reason can’t correct (319-322)

But one thing I am certain of, so weak is any trace

Of inborn nature past the power of reason to erase,

That there is nothing fundamentally at odds

With living out our lives so they are worthy of the gods.

 A hopeful and reassuring viewpoint.

I am also impressed by the powers of observation and deduction evident in this work.  Lucretius subscribed to the belief that the way to understand the universe is to observe the natural world around us and then use logic to draw deductions from these observations.  This poem contains many descriptions of natural phenomena with expositions of what we can and can’t deduce from these observations.  Lucretius’ Epicurean viewpoint on religion and the gods seems very brave and revolutionary for the time (or even within the last 200 years).  Early on, in Book I (Matter and Void), he writes (83-84):

[…] on the contrary, it is Religion breeds

Wickedness and that has given rise to wrongful deeds

He then describes Agaememnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, to persuade the gods to send

[…] fair and favourable winds to sail the fleet along! –

So potent was Religion in persuading to do wrong

An observation that holds true today where mobs of people are rioting and killing in Libya and the Middle East in the name of the prophet because they feel his name was slighted by some amateur American film-makers.  Where is the logic or justice in this but it is all done in the name of Religion.

The evocations of various phenomena of the time were likewise fascinating:

• garments dyed glowing purple from the murex of the Thessalian tide;
• spikenard bloom;
• Hyrcanian hounds;
• Molossian mastiffs;
• Traitor’s [Tarpeian]Rock;
• overpowering lad’s love [southernwood];
• an ancient Roman physician coating the lip of a goblet with honey to disguise the bitter taste of the wormwood medicine from his patient;
• mountains being “two thousand arrow-shots away” or “five hundred javelin-casts”;
• nymphs and goat-footed satyrs;
• a snake that, touched with human spit, will die;
• hellebore a poison for humans but “which makes goats and quail grow fat and sleek”;
• the “snow-white goose, Protector of the Roman Citadel”;
• a belief that the sight of a rooster was painful to a lion’s eyes;
• Babylonian coverlets; Babylonian perfumes; shoes from Sicyon; Alindan silks;
• the currents of the Black Sea uniformly gliding in one direction;  
• 'snake-handed elephants […] trained by Carthaginians to bear the wounds of wars’;
• Etesian squalls. 

The descriptions of phenomenae that I enjoyed the most were the Avernian lakes, where Lucretius  describes all the places where bizzare things have happened: birds falling dead out of the sky, “wing-footed stags enticing […] serpents from their holes” with their breath; trees whose shade kills people; wells of sweet water in the middle of the ocean etc.

There are references to the Great Flood (the notes refer the reader to Ovid’s Metamorphoses” and Deucalion- the Greek Noah - and his wife Pyrrha), an interesting similarity with Genesis.
So many of these concepts broached in the centuries B.C.E. were on the right track.  In Book V, Lucretius talks about a legend that once “Water lorded it over land”, about genes (Lucretius writes of generative seeds and like breeding like).  When trying to explain the movement of the stars he doesn’t have one single proveable theory and therefore suggests a few, one of which is that the heavens are a great sphere with a flow of air spinning  “the sphere in the direction that the stars are moving in”.  Right idea, wrong sphere.  His writing describes the principle that the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound; noting that you see a distant woodsman strike a massive tree with a double-bladed axe before you hear the sound of the axe hitting the tree.  He is off-base however on how lightening is formed, with his theory that clouds contain “a multitude of seeds of fire”.

He is wrong on several theories or conclusions.  He mentions in Book I (1052-1082) the concept that the Sun might be the centre of the universe with people on the other side of the earth who

when they behold the sun, we see the stars of night.  And that the seasons of the heavens come to us by turns, And when it’s night for one, then for the other daylight burns. […] How can there be a centre to to what’s infinitely vast? And even if there were, then why should anything stand fast? Why shouldn’t it be driven far away instead. […]

Nor is there any spot where bodies lose the force of weight

So they can stand still in the void.

However he concludes that the sun and moon are exactly the same size they appear because their outline is “sharp and clear”.  His description of the “dawn of the world” in Book V (Cosmos and Civilization) reminds me of the Garden of Eden in Genesis: greenery, the creation of all the animals and birds, the Earth giving sustenance and warmth, “but the dawn-time of the world did not bring forth harsh cold and snow, nor too much heat nor mighty winds that violently blow”.  There was the same idea of an easier time, with less suffering that we saw in Genesis.  For Lucretius this dawn-time changed when Mother Earth grew tired “like a woman wasted with long years”.  He talks about the Earth bearing food “more generously” in her prime.  In Book I he writes (1150) “Even now the world is past its prime”.  I wonder what Lucretius would think about the world today.

While Lucretius describes everything as being made of atoms in different configurations he didn’t understand (how could he!) what binds atoms together.  The Democritus/Epicurus atomic theory involved hooks and barbs rather than electronic bonds between positively and negatively charged ions.  The ancients wrote of smooth and rough atoms to explain the different properties: sound vs light, iron vs wood, heat vs water etc.  Still, I find it awe-inspiring that they believed that air, water, iron, flesh, plants etc were all made of the same basic components, just assembled in different configurations with different amounts of void between the atoms and some finite variety of atoms.

Lucretius also speaks of there being many “freaks” in the early years including “Hermaphrodites partaking of both sexes” which reminded me of Aristophanes story in Plato’s “Symposium”  where he explains love as being connected to proto-mankind being 3 types of people: man-man, woman-woman and man-woman, and each type was split in half by the gods with love being their eternal search for their missing half.

Lucretius describes some of the advances mankind had achieved, moving from a hunter-gatherer society with people wearing animal skins to a pastoral society wearing woven cloth, living indoors safe from savage beasts; but instead of being at risk from accidental poisonings due to lack of knowledge, and dying of infection due to lack of medical knowledge, the more civilized man now dies of deliberate poisonings or wounds suffered due to more sophisticated warfare and weapons.  He speaks of men dying from over-indulgence rather than starvation.  He describes the development of societal contracts (Book V, 1018-1023):

Then neighbours began to form the bonds of friendship,

With a will

Neither to be harmed themselves, nor to do another ill,

The safety of the babes and womenfolk in one another’s trust,

And indicated by gesturing and grunting it was just

For everyone to have mercy on the weak.

In Book III (Mortality and the Soul), Lucretius writes (54-55)

 […] To truly take the measure of a man,

You must observe him in the midst of trial and tribulation

He speaks about Avarice, blind Ambition, envy and greed and how mankind’s fear of death creates a lot of suffering.  He didn’t think that people should fear death as once we are gone, that’s it, we cease to exist (though our elemental particles remain in the universe) and so there is nothing to worry about as we won’t be there TO worry.

Book III, 1018-1023

[…] the Conscience fears for its misdeeds, and IT applies

Goads and floggings to ITSELF, neither does it surmise,
Meanwhile, that there can be, to all its sufferings, an end,

Nor, at length, a final limit to its punishment,

So it dreads these same oppressions will grow weightier with death,

Until, at last, the life of fools becomes a Hell on Earth.

Lucretius has good advice on how to be happy (Book V, 1117-1119):

But if you’d steer your life by a philosophy that’s true,

The way to be the wealthiest of men is to eschew

High living, and be contented in the mind […]

(Book V, 1131-1136)

Let others wear themselves out all for nothing, sweating blood,

Battling their way along ambition’s narrow road

Because their wisdom smacks of others’ lips, and they pursue

Things that they only know second-hand, rather than through

Their own senses […]

And writes about always wanting more (Book V, 1412-1415)

For whatever is at hand, if we have never known before

Anything finer, it gives us chief delight and reigns supreme.

That is, till something better comes along in our esteem

And ruins the earlier thing that’s now old-fashioned to our mind.

(Book V, 1430-1435)

Therefore the human race is ever laboring in vain,

And fretting the years away in bootless worries. For it’s plain

Man doesn’t realize that even having has its measure;

There’s a point beyond which nothing can increase our real pleasure.

And this is what has by degrees dragged Life so far from shore,

And stirred up from the very depths the tidal waves of War.

His recipe for happiness is simple, Book II 18-22

[…]All your nature yelps for is a body free from pain,

And, to enjoy pleasure, a mind removed from fear and care[…]

And so we see the body’s needs are altogether spare –

Only the bare minimum to keep suffering at bay

Yet which can furnish pleasures for us in a wide array.

He also debunks religion's role in all of this (Book V, 1184-1187)

Moreover, men observed the orderly movements of the heavens,

And beheld the cycling of the year with its returning seasons,

But could not fathom how these came about, and lacking reasons,

Found an escape by handing these things over to the gods

[…]

Lucretius does not have a very high opinion of women.  When he is writing about the development of looms, weaving and spinning he writes (Book V, 1353-1355)

[…] Naturally, at the start

Men, not women, spun the wool – for men in every art

Excel the weaker sex in cleverness by far […]

He seems to have a higher opinion of dogs (Book VI, 1221-1222)

 […] But the clan

Of Dogs was hardest hit, the true and steadfast friend of Man

Given my science background and over 30 years of thinking scientifically, I was very drawn to Lucretius' reasoning.  It seemed a big jump in logic from the writings we've read so far (Genesis, Bhagavad Gita, Plato's Phaedrus, Plato's Symposium) that try to explain the world around us and our purpose but as Lucretius himself said (Book I, 1117):
“One truth illuminate another, as light kindles light”

It's all a progression from there to here.

Discussion: Antigone and Phedre

On one level a play about conflicting laws, on another level a play about passion and duty.  The play ANTIGONE was full of dualism, a word I've never really thought much about prior to this class.

Youth [Antigone]  vs. Age [Creon]
Female [Antigone] vs. Male [Creon]
Ruler [Creon] vs. subjects [Antigone]
Passion [Antigone] vs. reason [Creon]
Duty to Family and Gods [Antigone] vs. duty to the State/Thebes [Creon]

Some of the group felt that Antigone was a rebellious teenager and the main conflict was between youth and age.  I didn't get that perpective from my reading of the text.  For me the main conflict was between the duty to the gods to bury a family member vs the duty towards the state to stand strongly against threats to the city state (and NOT bury the body of a traitor - as a warning to others who might try to attack Thebes).

Stephen set possible resolutions out as Aristotelian moderation vs a Hegelian requirement for synthesis (a better and more progressive solution, working out a way to have family loyalties AND loyalty to state).  Creon eventually did bend and decide to provide a proper burial and to pardon Antigone but too late.

Antigone is very single-minded: her duty to her family (brothers, parents) comes above all.  She even says that she would not go against the state for her husband or children as they can be replaced.  It's hard to know how she feels about her sister as she doesn't seem too concerned about any duty towards Ismene.  Creon feels equally strongly (though I'm not sure if he is equally passionate) about Thebes.

182    

But it’s even worse when he plays favourites

Puts family or friends ahead of fatherland.

Someone mentioned that in Greek plays, women are the holders of passion and men are the holders of reason but they get thrown off course by passion.
Lorraine mentioned that the cover of the text is a photo of Simone Weil.  I hadn't read the note about the photo.  Simone Weil died for holding to her principles, just as Antigone did.

Other than Creon, no one in the play seems to question Antigone's decision and actions.  At the end, Antigone who has been so strong, suddenly bewails her fate:

…They are taking me against my will.

Look at me O you lords of Thebes:
I am the last remnant of kings.
Look at what these wretched men are doing to me,
For my pure reverence!

Did Antigone feel that the gods would save her?  She seems to suddenly be fighting against her [self-induced] fate – being murdered for her reverence to the unwritten laws of the gods.

During the course of the play, Creon is the only character who really changes.  Unyielding and unwilling to bend at the beginning, before the end of the play he decides that holding to his original positions will lead to injustice.  He changes his mind but too late to avert tragedy.

In Phedre as well, passion seems much stronge than reason though those whose actions are most governed by passion seem to end tragically.  The play by Racine is based on a play called Hippolytus by Euripides.  Stephen mentioned that Racine was raised and educated in a Jansenist monastery in Port Royal.  Cornelius Jansen argued that since the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, man has not possessed free will.  Our lives are guided or directed by "concupisentia" (ardent desire) and subject to grace.  Most people are driven by their desires with only a few being guided  by grace.  This was compared to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.  Neither the Jansenists nor the Calvinists wanted to admit they felt desire because that would show they were not one of the "elect".

We had a discussion about guilt.  Phedre resists her attraction to Hipploytus because she feels it is wrong but her life is blighted by the guilt she feels over her feelings (though she feels she has been cursed by Venus and this is why she makes poor choices in love).  Hippolytus was a strong character, upright, chaste, strong and brave but he becomes weak and doomed when he falls in love (with Aricia).

Finally we discussed Aristotles' championing of "moderation" and how his works would have been known to the audiences of both plays.  Both Antigone and Phedre would have demonstrated what happens when you go to extremes and don’t practice moderation.

PHEDRE by Racine

PHÉDRE by Jean Racine, Tr by Ted Hughes

This book was quite interesting.  Before reading it, I had looked at some links to movie clips that Stephen had sent out.  There are a few clips and a movie trailer on youTube for  PHEDRE directed in 1962 by Jules Dassin and starring Anthony Perkins and Melina Mercouri.  The clips were very melodramatic.  Black and white with a voice-over describing Phedre in sharp, dramatic terms.  The scenes are emotional, Phedre pacing restlessly and throwing herself on the bed weeping, gazing longingly at Hippolytus, slapping her maid.  These may have coloured my perception of the play and of Phedre.

The language of the play seemed very different.  Phedre was written in the 17^th century by Racine, then translated in the last century by Ted Hughes, poet laureate in Great Britain – and this may be where the stylistic difference comes from.

It is the story of Phedre, married to Theseus.  When she married him, she met his son Hippolytus for the 1st time and fell in love with Hippolytus.  She tried to block out this love by living away from Hippolytus and treating him harshly so that he would take against her.  As the play opens, Theseus has been away for a long time and is reported dead.  This news causes Phedre to confess her love to Hippolytus, who in turn has fallen in love (secretly) with a young hostage, Aricia.  Just as all these conflicting events are unfolding, Theseus returns.  Phedre's loyal nurse convinces Phedre to allow Theseus to believe that Hipploytus has been importuning Phedre. Father and son have a fight and Theseus fatally curses his son.  Hippolytus speeds off in his chariot and dies bravely fighting a sea monster, the nurse commits suicide and Phedre confesses her illicit love to her husband and unable to face the wreckage she has caused, she takes poison (brought to Athens by her "sister, Medea") and dies.

While this play had all the elements of tragedy, it seemed a bit empty - I'm not really sure why.  When I look for reason and passion here, passion has the upper hand.  Theseus' absence and presumed death is the spark that sets off the chain of events.  He likely has been away indulging his passions.  Phedre is tormented by her passion for Hippolytus, which her reason tells her is wrong.  Hippolytus has a reputation for being chaste but he has a passion for Aricia.  He also has the impetuous passion of youth, that causes him to bolt when he is unjustly accused by his father, and which, along with his bravery, leads to his death.  His father Theseus loses his son when he allows his passion and anger at being betrayed cause him to fatally curse his son.  Though he quickly regrets this and tries to undo the curse, it's too late.  The nurse gives in to her passionate love (loyalty, jealousy?) for Phedre and plots to throw the blame on Hippolytus to save Phedre. When this causes more grief for Phedre, the nurse kills herself.  Phedre allows her passion for Hippolytus to ruin her life though when she tried reason to put distance between herself and Hippolytus, she was able to cope and survive, albeit very unhappily.  At the end when she sees what she has caused and what she has allowed to happen, she kills herself (helped by her very passionate sister, Medea).

ANTIGONE by Sophocles

ANTIGONE  (by Sophocles, Transl. Paul Woodruff, Hackett, 2001)

This play by Sophocles contains 2 strong characters: Antigone and her uncle Creon, former regent and now ruler of Thebes. 

Synopsis

Just prior to the start of the play, Thebes had just successfully fought off an attack by Antigone’s brother Polyneices and the Argive navy.  Polyneices and his brother Eteocles quarreled after their father‘s (Oedipus’) death, over who would rule Thebes.  Eteocles threw his support behind allowing Creon (their uncle) to continue as ruler.  Polyneices, who married a princess of Argos, raised the Argive fleet against Thebes.  Both brothers ended up killing each other during the battle.  Creon decrees that Eteocles will have a hero’s burial with all honours.  He also decreed that Polyneices’s body should be left unburied, for the dogs and vultures to scavenge, because this nephew had betrayed Thebes. 

In the first sections of ANTIGONE, Creon seems a thoughtful but severe ruler.  He has strong feelings about ruling and leadership, about honesty and integrity but foremost he seems concerned about the health and survival of Thebes.

I will never call a man my friend

If he is hostile to this land.  I know this well:

The city is our lifeboat: we have no friends at all

Unless we keep her sailing right side up.

Such are my laws. By them I’ll raise this city high.

Antigone is similarly a person of strong principles - and she will stand by them no matter the cost.  She tries to convince her sister Ismene to stand with her in defying Creon and burying their brother Polyneices.  When Ismene is fearful and reluctant, Antigone immediately lets her off the hook but not without condemning her lack of resolve and bravery:

Go on and BE the way you choose to be. I

Will bury him.  I will have a noble death

[…]

You, keep to your choice:

Go on insulting what the gods hold dear.

Both Antigone and Creon are proud of the “character of their mind” (as Creon congratulates himself); the aspect in each of them which most strongly combines the passionate and the rational.  Their passion makes them strong, severe and inflexible.  Their ‘reason’ allows them to set out an ethical framework to justify their actions and to close their minds to other perspectives.  By the end of the play, both Creon and Antigone have suffered and lost everything because of the ‘character of their minds’ and their unwillingness to waver from their positions.  Antigone has died for her passion and Creon has lost everything he values because of holding to his severe reasoning.

Again I like the Chorus in this play.  A council of elders (male elders of course) they offer a wise and balanced viewpoint, maybe they are too tired for passion?  They offer a descriptive summary of mankind’s place in the world:

Many wonders, many terrors

But none more wonderful than the human race

Or more dangerous.

This creature travels on a winter gale

Across the silver sea,

Shadowed by high-surging waves,

While on Earth, grandest of the gods,

He grinds the deathless, tireless land away,

Turning and turning the plow

From year to year, behind the driven horses.

Light-headed birds he catches

And takes them away in legions.  Wild beasts

Also fall prey to him.

And all that is born to live beneath the sea

Is thrashing in his woven nets.

For he is Man, and he is cunning.

He has invented ways to take control

Of beasts that range the mountain meadows:

Taken down the shaggy-necked horses,

The tireless mountain bulls,

And put them under the yoke.

Language and a mind swift as the wind

For making plans –

And the character to live in cities under law.

He’s learned to take cover from a frost

And escape sharp arrows of sleet.

He has the means to handle every need,

Never steps toward the future without the means.

Except for Death: He’s got himself no relief from that,

Though he puts his mind to seeking cures

For plagues that are hopeless.

This antistrophe a (second stanza above) reminds me of Genesis

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/genesis-rsv.asp

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." 29 And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.

I’m not sure, over two thousand years later, that humankind has come to any clearer perspective on our place in the universe.  What the thinkers were grappling with millennia ago, we still have not solved today.  We do have thinkers that grasp that mankind does NOT have “dominion…over all the earth” but their words of wisdom are ignored and buried deep by those in power and by monetary interests.

Creon, though he would have considered that man has dominion over everything on earth (everything that was not the gods’) did have a clear understanding of the perils of money:

Money is the nastiest weed ever to sprout

In human soil.  Money will ravage a city,

Tear men from their homes and send them into exile.

Money teaches good minds to go bad;

It is the source of every shameful human deed.

Money points the way to wickedness,

Lets people know the full rage of irreverence.

…

In the end, Antigone is dead, having held true to her severe ethics.  Creon has allowed his mind to open up and admit other viewpoints, make room for compassion and tolerance, but too late.  He loses his only son, his wife and his honour.  There are many good lines in the play about the danger of a closed mind – most of these uttered by Haemon (Creon's son and affianced to Antigone).  I didn’t expect to like him but his speeches to his father were very clever.  He manages to speak against his father’s positions and to bring a different perspective but does so without fatally alienating the king.  Haemon seems to have the better balance of passion and reason.  He loves Antigone and he has a passion for justice but he can use reason to try and accomplish his goals. 

Haemon:

And now, don’t always cling to the same anger,

Don’t keep saying this, and nothing else is right.

If a man believes that he alone has a sound mind,

And no one else can speak or think as well as he does,

Then, when people study him, they’ll find an empty book.

But a wise man can learn a lot and never be ashamed…

Between Haemon’s words and the prophecy of Tiresias (the soothsayer), Creon eventually changes his mind and realizes he was wrong to deny a proper burial to Polyneices and wrong to condemn Antigone to death for trying to honour her brother.

It has been fascinating to read these last 3 Greek plays (Medea, Lysistrata, Antigone) with their strong female characters.  Of the 3, Lysistrata is most admirable.  Like Haemon, she combines passion and reason in a good balance.

DISCUSSION: Medea and Lysistrata

In these 2 weeks we are looking at 4 Greek plays: Medea, Lysistrata, Antigone and Phedre (though Racine's work is a 17th century play, not a Greek text).  During this week's class we discussed some of the characteristics of the audiences for whom the plays would have been written.

Medea was written for an Athenian audience.  They would have seen Medea as an outsider, a foreigner and therefore not necessarily as deserving of rights and duties as a Greek would be.  In general the breaking of a vow or oath would be a serious transgression.  Jason's breaking of his wedding vows to Medea was serious but there was some debate as to whether the Athenian audience would have felt the same about a vow made to Medea, the barbarian.

I think they would have, based on the fact that the Greek king, Aegeus, feels that Medea has been wronged and offers her sanctuary if she can get herself safely to his kingdom (though part of his willingness to help, he acknowledges, is that Medea has promised to grant his desire for children).  Euripides did not make Jason an admirable character and at the end, Medea is safe, rescued by the god Helios and taken away from Corinth to safety.  It's difficult to know how the Athenian audiences would have reacted to this ending.  Her filicide would have shocked the audience though they may have been sympathetic to her passion and to how she was wronged by Jason.

One rewarding side aspect of reading these plays is being sent some images of ancient Greek art that portray scenes from these stories.  I remember visiting numerous museum collections during travels in Europe (British Museum, Louvre, museums in Olympia, Athens and Crete etc) and looking at Greek pottery, friezes etc.  The names and scenes meant little to me at the time.

Calyx from the Cleveland Museum  FLICKR photo of Lucanian Vase

It was very important to the Greeks of the time to be a citizen of a Greek city - and Jason's efforts to secure himself a place as a citizen of Corinth would have likely been seen as very justified.  The concept of 'exile' came up.  Jason was exiled from his land of birth several times and likely was motivated to act as he did in Corinth in order to end his exile and find a safe place of refuge as a citizen.
Medea became an exile through her love and devotion to Jason and then was faced with being exiled from Jason when he betrayed her.  Though she was able to negotiate a refuge for herself with Aegeus, (and was rational enough to arrange this before enacting her vengeance) her main passion was for revenge on Jason at whatever cost.

"Exile" is still a powerful situation today. One of the group mentioned a case where a man was exiled from Nelson for harassing a woman and the judge's decision was overturned because this was considered too harsh of a punishment.  The aboriginal justice system contemplates exile from the community as a potential punishment.  Exile or banishment is still used in Mormon communities such as Bountiful, to devastating effect on those banished.  Society functionally exiles those labelled as social pariahs such as sex offenders, particularly pedophiles.  The Dalai Lama was exiled from Tibet by China but in this case, one could argue that he may have become a more galvanizing world figure because of this.

The definition of the word "reason" also came up.

Reason (n.), to reason (v.)
Reasoned decision
Rationale
Rationalizing a decision

The Oxford dictionary sets down several definitions for 'reason'
Oxford Dictionary: reason

1.  a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event:

2.   [mass noun] the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgements logically:

The verb 'to reason' is very different from 'to rationalize, which is what Jason seems to be doing (sophistry).

Rationalize  Oxford Dictionary: rationalize

1.  attempt to explain or justify (behaviour or an attitude) with logical reasons, even if these are not appropriate:

Sophistry  Oxford Dictionary: sophistry

1.   the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving

Medea reasoned out a plan to punish Jason (and Creon and his daughter) as well as how she (alone of her family) could escape to a place of refuge, but her decisions were not balanced, reasoned decisions.  Her actions were governed only by her own pain and rage, not by the needs or rights of anyone else.  And she would not allow anyone to try and sway her from her decision.  We spoke about how reason that isn't tempered by ethics (instrumental reasoning) can degenerate into evil.

Medea is not unperceptive.  She says:

Yet there are other people who,

just because they lead a quiet life,

are thought to be aloof.

There is no justice in human eyesight:

people take one look and hate a man,

before they know his heart,

though no injustice has been done to them.

The viewpoint of the stranger.

We discussed how both Jason and Medea contributed to their eventual problems.  Jason won the Golden Fleece by accepting Medea's ruthless help, help which was motivated by her passion for Jason. How could Jason have expected Medea to calmly and complaisantly take a back seat while he breaks his vows to her and marries another woman, endangering Medea and their children - though Jason tries to convince her that 'I did it all for us honey'.

I found it hard at the end of Medea to take away any compelling message.  There were no characters that I unequivocally liked, no one who seemed to have the moral high ground, certainly no winners.  This may just reflect a view the Greeks had that the ways of the gods and of the powerful were mysterious and unpredictable.  It may have been their way to explain the unpredictable, how devastating and tragic events can occur, seemingly for no reason and unfairly.  As the Nurse warns in the play:

I would never want to be grand and majestic - just let me grown old in simple security.

Even the word "moderation" sounds good when you say it.

For mortals the middle is the safest, in word and deed.

Too much is too much, and there is always a danger

a god may get angry and ruin your household.

One intriguing thought from the chorus is about the power of music.

...no one took the time to discover the music that might do some good, the chords or the harmony

people could use to relieve all the hateful pain and distress

that leads to the downfall of houses, the deaths and the dreadful misfortunes.

Let me tell you, there would be some gain in that - music with the power to heal.

Euripides did seem somewhat sympathetic towards women.  He describes with sympathy the lot of women, having to obtain security through marriage and to adapt themselves to whomever their husband is.   He has Medea say

I'd rather take my stand behind a shield three times

than go through childbirth once.

Medea is certainly a strong woman but for me, her flaws are too horrifying.

By contrast Lysistrata is eminently admirable.  Also a strong woman but passion tempered with reason. And because of that, her situation ends well.  Peace and happiness vs death and loss.

I really did not like some aspects of the translation we used.  In both the Hackett translation and the Signet one I used, the translator gave the Spartan women an "appalachian" type accent.  I found it very jarring and it kept bringing me out of 5th century Greece and into some Hatfield & McCoy or Deliverance type locale.  Lauren had a Penguin Classics text and that translator gave the Spartans a Yorkshire dialect.  I found this more palatable though maybe to a British reader it would be equally grating.

The humour was quite broad and sexual in Lysistrata - it would be interesting to see it performed and see how it holds up today.  We spoke in class about whether and how the play would have been different if it had been written by a woman, such as Sappho.  I think it would have been more lyrical and more passionate.  Lysistrata would possibly have had more emotion, more connection to the people and the world around her.

The main passion in this play is lust, a fairly shallow passion.  There is sexual lust (which is surprisingly egalitarian in Lysistrata - men and women both suffering when sex is withdrawn); and there is blood lust - the men wanting to continue the war.

I much preferred Lysistrata as a woman and as a character.  The balance of reason and passion with reason having the upper hand was preferable to Medea's uncontrolled and destructive passion.

Aristophanes' Lysistrata

Lysistrata by Aristophanes.  Transl. Douglass Parker, Hackett, 2001
Note: The assigned text was the Hackett edition, 2003, Tr. Sarah Ruden.

The premise behind Lysistrata is well-known: women from 2 warring communities withholding sex from their men in order to force the men to make peace.  It's obviously a timeless theme as this summer in Togo, women in a civil rights movement called on the women of Togo to withhold sex from their husbands in order to force the president of the country to step down.  So far the women of Togo haven't been successful (President Faure Gnassingbe remains in power) but I'm not sure they were as steadfast and unified as the Greek women during the Peloponnesian War.

Lysistrata is a great character: brave, strong, principled, determined, steadfast and smart. She's the quintessential leader: she has a vision, figures out a novel plan to achieve her goal (thinking "outside the box" to use the modern phrase), strategizes (withhold sex AND seize the Treasury), seeks and obtains consensus from the stakeholders, rallies her troops, monitors for weakness and steps in as needed to strengthens the women's resolve.

Lysistrata
Darlings, let's call a halt to this hocus-pocus.
You miss your men - now isn't that the trouble?

[Shamefaced nods from the group]

Don't you think they miss you just as much?
I can assure you, their nights are every bit
as hard as yours. So be good girls; endure!
Persist a few days more, and Victory is ours.
It's fated: a current prophecy declares that the men
Will go down to defeat before us, provided that we
Maintain a United Front.

Lysistrata then quotes the prophecy:

But when the swallows, in flight from the
hoopoes, have flocked to a hole
on high, and stoutly eschew their
accustomed perch on the pole,
yea, then shall Thunderer Zeus to
their suff'ring establish a stop,
by making the lower the upper [...]

But should these swallows, indulging their
lust for the perch, lose heart,
dissolve their flocks in winged dissension,
and singly depart
the sacred stronghold, breaking the 
bands that bind them together - 
then know them as lewd, the pervertedest
birds that ever wore feather.

Lysistrata herself seems to combine passion and reason in an ideal way.  She is very passionate in her views and in her resolve but she tempers her passion with reason.  Reason probably has the upper hand in Lysistrata which is likely why the outcome is peace, happiness, joy, contentment vs Medea's tidal wave of destruction.

LYSISTRATA ends with our heroine proffering some advice in a voice of reason that still has merit almost 2500 years later - if only we would listen:

Each man stand by his wife, each wife by her husband.
Dance to the gods' glory, and thank them for the happy ending.
And, from now on, please be careful.
Let's not make the same mistakes again.

MEDEA by Euripides



MEDEA (Euripides, Transl. Diane Arnson Svarlien, Hackett 2008)

We have 2 plays to read this week, both Greek playwrights from the 5th century B.C.E.
Medea is a play about the end of Jason and Medea's marriage.  In the fine tradition of Greek tragedy, the marriage ends in slaughter and the utter decimation of many lives.  I didn't remember the details of the story but, briefly, Jason was challenged by his uncle to bring back the Golden Fleece from Colchis in order to reclaim his patrimony.  Medea, beautiful daughter of Aeetes (King of Colchis), falls in love with Jason and betrays her father in order to help Jason succeed.  She flees with Jason and his Argonauts, and in order to delay pursuit she kills her younger brother, chopping him into pieces so that she can throw them overboard and thus delay the pursuing fleet.  Jason's uncle then betrays him again, denying him the throne.  Jason and Medea eventually end up in Corinth and have 2 sons.  The play opens as Medea finds out she and her 2 children are being banished from Corinth by Creon, King of Corinth.  Jason has married the daughter of Creon, betraying his vows to Medea.

Medea is an incredibly strong character.  I had a hard time sympathizing with her due to her background (her pre-Corinth actions).  She asks Jason
"Where do I turn now? To my father's household and fatherland, which I betrayed for you? Or Pelias' poor daughters?  Naturally they'll welcome me - the one who killed their father!"  

Hard to sympathize with a woman who was so much the cause of her situation.  She is ruthless, betraying everyone around her because of her passion for Jason, yet furious with him when he in turn betrays her.  And she is so single-minded and bent on revenge that she won't be swayed from her plan to slaughter her children as revenge upon their father.

The Chorus asks Medea:
"Since you have brought this plan to us, and since
I want to help you, and since I support
the laws of mankind, I ask you not to do this."

But Medea won't listen.
"There is no other way.  It's understandable
that you would say this - you're not the one who's suffered."

Chorus:
"Will you have the nerve to kill your children?"

Medea:
"Yes: to wound my husband the most deeply."

In modern terms, one could almost call her a psychopath - amoral and only aware of her own needs.  As an aside, it's interesting how many psychological terms come from Greek myth: narcissistic personality, oedipal complex, psychopath (from Psyche, beloved of Eros), phobic (from Phobos, son of Aphrodite) etc.
Medea is furious with Jason for betraying and abandoning her, and though she justifies why he deserves retribution, instead of killing him, she kills their children as well as his new wife (who didn't betray any vows).  She also kills the king, Creon, whose decision to banish her seems reasonable given Medea's very vocal reaction to the marriage of his daughter and Jason, and Medea's threats against Creon's kingdom and family.

Medea seems governed solely by passion.  She is clever and plots her revenge but she doesn't make a reasonable decision.  She justifies a course of action that answers her immediate desires - and hers alone.  She also arranges a sanctuary (again only for her, not for her children) with Aegeus, a visiting king, so she makes sure she will be OK, even while she is laying waste to everyone around her.

Jason seems reasonable, though ineffectual, as he tries to convince Medea that his actions in marrying the princess were done solely to secure a place in Corinth for them all: Jason, Medea and their two children.  He comes across as weak and stupid, trying to placate Medea and convince her to be complaisant, to be a "good girl" and just go along with his plans.

The strong words and passion of Medea contrast with the reasoned and descriptive speeches of the chorus, who tries to dissuade Medea.  Euripides (through the chorus' words, seems to join passion (Desire) and reason (Wisdom) as both ruling together:

The children of Erechtheus have always prospered,

descended from blessed gods.

They graze, in their sacred stronghold, on glorious wisdom,

with a delicate step through the clear brilliant air.

They say that there

the nine Pierian Muses once gave birth

to Harmony with golden hair.

They sing that Cypris dipped her pitcher in the waters

of beautiful Cephisus;

she sighed, and her breaths were fragrant and temperate breezes.

With a garland of sweet-smelling roses in her hair

she sends Desires

to take their places alongside Wisdom's throne

and nurture excellence with her.

This seems to contradict Nietzche's argument (as set down in Robin Mitchell-Boyask's introduction to Medea) that Euripides destroyed Greek tragedy by favouring reason over passion.  Nietzche [apparently] thought that Greek tragedy balanced "the two primary forces in the human spirit, the Apollonian (the rational) and the Dionysian (the irrational)".  In Medea, Euripides seems to say that passion and reason are both needed for excellence though in Medea, passion seems to have prevailed.  Medea is governed almost exclusively by her passions.  Jason appears to have tried to use reason to guide his decisions: accepting Medea's help to obtain the Golden Fleece and, when that didn't give him the throne and security he wanted, marrying the Corinthian princess in order to secure himself a place in Corinth.  It all seems very reasoned though also very self-serving - and somewhat clueless if he thought Medea would calmly go along with his actions.

In the end Passion seems to win out.  The Corinthian royals are murdered, Jason's life is laid waste as he loses all: new wife, father-in-law, security in Corinth, his children and his 1st wife, Medea.  Medea and Jason's children are slaughtered by their mother and the only person to survive is Medea, who escapes the carnage she brought about, in a flying chariot, protected by her grandfather, the sun god Helios.